Development and validation of a brief screening version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire

Objective: The goal of this study was to develop and validate a short form of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (the CTQ-SF) as a screening measure for maltreatment histories in both clinical and nonreferred groups.

Method: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the 70 original CTQ items were used to create a 28-item version of the scale (25 clinical items and three validity items) and test the measurement invariance of the 25 clinical items across four samples: 378 adult substance abusing patients from New York City, 396 adolescent psychiatric inpatients, 625 substance abusing individuals from southwest Texas, and 579 individuals from a normative community sample (combined N=1978).

Results: Results showed that the CTQ-SF’s items held essentially the same meaning across all four samples (i.e., measurement invariance). Moreover, the scale demonstrated good criterion-related validity in a subsample of adolescents on whom corroborative data were available.

Conclusions: These findings support the viability of the CTQ-SF across diverse clinical and nonreferred populations.